An Angelic Melody
by miriam.95
Summary: At the end, it's not so important the identity of those who, albeit for a few minutes, make you smile again, live again.


"**An Angelic Melody"**

Hogwarts has never been quieter as in this rainy spring morning.

The water of Lake Nero, the leaves of the park, the roots of the trees, the interior of the castle, everything seems to lie helpless, near and far from the time when cheerfulness and serenity had made typical this English countryside.

From a distance you can see some rare figure who enters and leaves the castle, the lot surrounded by a silent and slightly melancholic atmosphere.

Only from a high window located in the south of the manor you can see a dim light turned on by someone, maybe motivated by a desire to revolt against the bleak landscape outside.

It's indeed from this window that comes a little tune, an angelic and delicate melody, yet imbued with the melancholy reigning master in Hogwarts.

If we wanted to get closer to that sound, we'd cross the park, and observe closely how the sadness sinks in every single particle of the landscape, in the bark of trees, in the veins of the leaves, in the infant pollen washed on the first spring flowers, in the ground beneath our feet, in the small grains of dust billowing into the damp air.

This sound's appeal increases with each step, the spectacular melody intoxicates the limbs, a thing that hardly occurs in everyday life, but then life is full of gifts we just have to learn to pick at the right time.

The castle's interior lacks its usual joyful atmosphere, there's no student around, a sign that the lessons have been suspended, as understandable. The Triwizard Tournament ended recently, but its consequences are very unlikely to be soon forgotten in the manor.

With a closer look, however, someone will notice there's a figure in motion in the corridors, wearing a heavy dark coat, easily camouflaged with the walls and the black emblems spread everywhere in the castle.

Neville Longbottom is moving quickly, a small hint of awkwardness that, despite the improvement acquired as years passed by still characterizes him, his face furrowed by a slight wrinkle of expression. Rapidly, he continues his journey down the imposing castle's stairs.

Neville keep on advancing until the melody comes out at its full volume: it probably arrives from a disused room, left ajar by the unknown musician.

The desire to discover the author of that deep sound, so angelic, but so damn sad, is strong, but the need to sit down, close your eyes and listen only to the singing is even more intense.

The music flows inexorably, as if that sweet sound had the power to erase all the pain which, in those days, has penetrated into the hearts of too many people but, at the same time, also as if it cruelly doubled it .

Neville can't give a name to the mixed feelings stirring up in his heart, but within himself he knows that, once discovered this unique melody, he won't be able to do without it.

The music seems to be played by all the tears, the sorrows, the pains, the injustices of those days or perhaps, more generally, by life itself, which penetrate strongly into the limbs of anyone with a heart and feelings, alternating with happy memories, creating a confusion between illusion and reality, and together they make you fall and rise, fall and rise and fall again.

Suddenly, the music stops and Neville seems to recover, struck by a feeling of bewilderment, as if the music had carried him away from the world for a period of time, maybe a few minutes, an hour, a day or more, and as if losing that peace had taken away all the balance he required to face the reality surrounding himself and his comrades.

Now that the music has lost all its power, Neville decides to peep into the room, eager to discover the author of that magical sound.

He leans quietly and catch a glimpse of an old piano; in front of it, sitting, there's a girl with long straight and black hair, lending a delicious feeling of softness.

Neville doesn't recognize who the girl is, but maybe her identity is not so important as the sudden and inexplicable need to talk to her.

The girl moves slightly, aroused from her rest by a small blast or perhaps by the sensation of having an audience.

Neville stands by the door, waiting for something that even himself can't define, but perhaps Fate so decreed; he lightly beats the leg against the entry frame, causing a low noise.

He sees the girl moving, this time noticeably, uttering a whisper of surprise, but still she doesn't turn completely to the newcomer.

"Please excuse me, I didn't want to scare you ..." apologizes Neville, his face slightly red for the umpteenth sorry figure.

The black haired girl squeezes her arms around his body, as if protecting herself from something, she's afraid, but pleased that there's someone with her.

Disappointed not to have received a response from the girl, Neville decides to leave, perhaps he shouldn't even have gone up there, but he's stopped by her delicate voice.

"Don't go... Please..." a faint sound, a silent cry for help, issued from the lips of the girl, who has the power to strike Neville.

"I didn't want to bother you, I just heard your music... and I couldn't resist, you're so good... "

Neville can't see it, but a faint blush has spread on the girl's exceedingly pale face.

"Thank you, nobody ever heard me playing before, except..." the girl's voice suddenly cracks at the memory.

"Except who?" asks the boy, too naive to understand the pain that the answer would bring to her.

"He... well, he's gone... " a little hiccup comes out from the lips of the girl, too taken by her memory to mind her loss of control in front of a stranger.

"Damn it, sorry again, I shouldn't ask, I could imagine... " a clumsy Neville mutters heartfelt words of forgiveness, not to have thought before speaking.

"Don't apologize, how could you know... One thing I ask you only, please... Don't start treating me with kid gloves out of pity, I couldn't stand it... These days I had to accept the sympathy of friends, of professors who only wanted to help, not knowing that this way I only feel worse... The fact is, I miss him terribly ... "

This time the girl really begins to cry, for the first time since Fate has taken away the person who changed her life.

It 's a releasing cry, tears fall copiously, happy to leave those sad eyes, where they had been segregated for too long, unable to escape.

[ Like the **rain** at last falling on the ground, after days of cool and cloudy weather ]

A wanted cry, with whom Cho Chang finally shows for the first time all the pain the loss of Cedric Diggory caused her.

Now she feels better, and marveled that a simple stranger had been able to draw from her all the emotions and pain soaked into her every particle, when even her best friend failed.

A sensation of emptiness seizes the body of Cho, now the pain seems more bearable.

[At last, the clouds can feel free for the first time in a long.]

Tear after tear.

**[Drop **by** drop]**

Neville is simply enchanted by this mysterious girl.

Her voice, her hair, her melody, even her crying, which makes one perceive the delicacy the Asian faces her grief with.

A cry too quiet, some might say, compared to the great sorrow of Cho, a girl too soon deprived of her lover.

"Excuse me, " repeats Neville, his voice low, amazed at how much he shares in the suffering of the stranger, "I know how you feel..." mutters, as if speaking more to himself than to her.

"How could you?" a direct question, embarrassing, painful, but what is happening to them right now goes beyond the boundaries of the imaginable.

A kind of harmony is born between two young people struggling with something too big for them.

"I... well... my parents... They're not dead... but I can't reach them out anymore... " Neville closes his eyes.

"What happened?" whispers the girl, surprised she really want to know about the parents of that boy, perhaps a stranger no more.

"They... have been tortured by a Death Eater... ". Neville's voice cracks for a moment, his face slightly red to counteract the various emotions rising up inside him, anxious to come out. "They lost their mind, and didn't retrieve it... They're St. Mungo's patients now, and when Professor Dumbledore gives me permission, I to go to find them during school hours..." ends the boy, surprised not to feel so embarrassed as he expected.

"I... I'm sorry. Sometimes I'm so taken by my pain that I become so selfish I don't understand this war is hurting us all... " utters Cho Chang sadly.

Silence falls between them. Not one embarrassing, though, in which each tries desperately to say something; the silence, indeed, seems to be perfect in a moment like that.

As if it helped to better impress in one's mind the last words of the girl, all too true.

"I... I'm afraid ..." Cho whispers.

"Same here... I'm afraid that other misfortunes plummet on me, on the people I'm close... on all of us, involved in this reality we haven't decided..." lets go Neville, now thoroughly familiar with the young Eastern, which has now stopped crying.

"I'm afraid every night of what I could find in the morning, I'm afraid of what might happen again in my life, having been deprived of him... I'm afraid, afraid for my parents, far away but terribly in danger all the same. We are all in danger... ". One last hiccup comes from her lips.

The two young people haven't gazed into each other's eyes yet, they don't need it, they're just unknowingly and mutually reassuring with their voices.

"I just hope to have a chance to take the field, fight with the one who has killed a good man, brave, who didn't deserve it. I hope his heart, always assuming he still has one, feels soon the terrible pain of death. Only then he will be vindicated " concludes the girl, knowing for the first time the stage of anger after the one of loss and pain.

"All that you hope, that we all hope, will happen. I promise. There will be peace one day in this world now destroyed, but I will fight, we'll fight together to allow our children to live happy, far away from all this. "

Neville seems to acquire a courage he never had before: perhaps being here, with this stranger, made him understand we must not allow evil to enter into souls cruelly, as a sign of resignation to a life already destroyed, but we have instead to fight it.

"Nobody has the power to kill us, forcefully, without us reacting. We just have to find the strength to try and build a better world for us, for our children. "

This was what Neville Longbottom and Cho Chang discovered that drizzly spring morning.

Two strangers, who decided to remain so.

At the end, it's not so important the identity of those who, albeit for a few minutes, make you smile again, live again.

And this, Neville and Cho would never forget.

_It's life we deal with. Not death. He that sees the light, and knows the light, shall live." ._ (Bob Marley)


End file.
